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Aliens (1986)
| language = English | budget = $18,500,000 | gross = | preceded_by = Alien | followed_by = Alien 3 | rating = 8.5 }} Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action horror film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton. A sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Aliens, follows Weaver's character Ellen Ripley, as she returns to the planet, where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature, this time accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines. Aliens' action-adventure tone was in contrast to the horror motifs of the original Alien. Following the success of The Terminator (1984), which helped establish Cameron as a major action director, 20th Century Fox greenlit Aliens with a budget of approximately $18 million. It was filmed in England at Pinewood Studios and at a decommissioned power plant. Plot Ellen Ripley, the only survivor of the space freighter Nostromo, is rescued and revived in the year 2179 after drifting for fifty-seven years in stasis in space after its shuttlecraft and lifeboat, The Narcissus, is casually found through sheer luck. At an interview before a panel of executives from her employer, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, her testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism, as she has no physical evidence. Ripley loses her space-flight license as a result of her "questionable judgment" and learns that LV-426, the planet where her crew first encountered the ship and the Alien eggs, is now home to a terraforming colony, that has 60-70 families. Ripley is later visited by Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke and Lieutenant Gorman of the Colonial Marines, who inform her, that the contact to the colony on LV-426 has been lost. Fearing the worst, the company decides to dispatch Burke and a unit of marines to investigate and offers to restore Ripley's flight status and pick up her contract, if she will accompany them as a consultant. Traumatized by her previous encounter with the Alien, Ripley initially refuses, but accepts after Burke promises, that the team will destroy any Aliens found and not attempt to study them. She leaves the cat at home. Aboard the warship Sulaco she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including Sergeant Apone, Corporal Hicks, Private Vasquez, Private Hudson and the android and technician Bishop, toward whom Ripley is initially hostile due to her previous experience with the android Ash aboard the Nostromo. The expedition descends to the surface of LV-426 via dropship, where they find the colony seemingly abandoned, but also with traces of a fight, in which the colonists seem to have lost and traces, that the Aliens must have been the ones, who have defeated the colony. No bodies, however are found. Two living facehuggers, however, are found in containment tanks in the medical lab. The only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt. The marines determine, that the colonists must be clustered in the nuclear-powered atmosphere processing station, because the signs of their transmitters are there. They go there and find a large Alien nest and the missing colonists, who have been cocooned for additional aliens. The Aliens notice their presence and attack, killing most of the unit and capturing Apone and Dietrich. Ripley is able to rescue Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson. With Gorman knocked unconscious during the rescue, Hicks assumes command and orders the dropship to recover the survivors, intending to return to the Sulaco and destroy the colony from orbit, like Ripley proposed then. A stowaway Alien, however, kills the dropship pilots in flight, causing the vessel to crash into the processing station. Adapting to the new situation, the surviving humans barricade themselves inside the colony complex for their own protection against the Aliens. Later Ripley discovers, that it was Burke, who, after her interview regarding the events of the Nostromo, ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship, where the Nostromo crew first encountered the Alien eggs, and that he hopes to return Alien specimens to the company laboratories, where he can profit from their use as biological weapons. She threatens to expose him, but Bishop soon informs the group of a greater threat: the processing station has become damaged because of the fighting there and therefore has become unstable and will soon detonate with the force of a thermonuclear weapon of 40 megatons. He volunteers to use the colony's transmitter to pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface by remote control, so that the group can escape, since he is the only one capable of doing it. Ripley and Newt later fall asleep in the medical laboratory and then awaken to find themselves locked in the room with the two facehuggers, which have been released from their tanks. Ripley is able to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. Ripley realizes it was Burke and accuses him of attempting to smuggle implanted Alien embryos past Earth's quarantine inside her and Newt for the company and of planning to kill the rest of the marines in hypersleep during the return trip, so that no one could contradict his invented version of events. The electricity is suddenly cut off at that moment and numerous Aliens attack through the ceiling. Hudson, Burke, Gorman, and Vasquez are killed, while Newt is captured by the Aliens during the retreat towards Bishop and the second dropship, which is about to land. Ripley and an injured Hicks reach Bishop and the second dropship, but Ripley refuses to leave Newt behind. She rescues Newt from the hive in the processing station, where the two encounter the Alien queen and her egg chamber. Ripley destroys most of the eggs, enraging the queen, who escapes by tearing free from her ovipositor. Closely pursued by the queen, Ripley and Newt rendezvous with Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the colony is consumed by the nuclear blast. Back on the Sulaco, Ripley and Bishop's relief at their escape is interrupted, when the Alien queen, stowed away on the dropship's landing gear, impales Bishop and tears him in half. Ripley battles the queen using an exosuit cargo-loader, before expelling it into space through an airlock. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and the still-functioning Bishop then enter hypersleep for the return to Earth. Cast AliensEllen.jpg|Ellen Ripley AliensHicks.jpg|Corporal Dwayne Hicks aliens_vasquez_160x225boxart_160w.jpg|Private Jenette Vazquez Aliens Newt.jpg|Rebecca "Newt" Jordan aliens-marines-bishop.png|Bishop Aliens 200px-Gorman.png|Lieutenant Gorman Aliens Apone.jpg|Sergeant Apone Aliens Hudson.jpg|Private Williams Hudson Aliens Burke.jpg|Carter Burke aliens_drake_160x225boxart_160w.jpg|Private Drake Aliens Frost.jpg|Private Frost Ferro_aliens.jpg|Caplain Ferro Gross and awards Aliens grossed $86 million at the US box office during its 1986 theatrical release and $131 million internationally. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver. It won in the categories of Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. It won eight Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actress for Weaver and Best Direction for Cameron. Trivia * A "Special Edition" of Aliens was released in 1992 on laserdisc and VHS, that restored seventeen minutes of deleted footage. * It is revealed in the deleted footage, that Ripley had a daughter, who died because of old age, which explains her deep motherly behavior towards Newt and the intact colony can also be seen. It was Newt´s family, who found the ship under Burke´s orders, which the colony had to carry out and which will also ignite the following disaster on the colony. * Two important actors from The Terminator (1984), Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen, together with James Cameron, also had roles in this movie. Gallery aliens1.jpg Aliens Marines.jpg Aliens Bishop2.jpg index10006.jpg index10005.jpg index10014.jpg Aliens10.jpg Aliens Newt2.jpg images10012.jpg aliens-1986-newt-and-alien.jpg index10013.jpg images10013.jpg aliens1986specialeditio_zpsd30cbde7.jpg alienscameron1986aliens.jpg aliens-bfi-00m-cu8.jpg Aliens111.jpg Videos External links * * * * * Category:Films of the 1980s Category:1986 films Category:Sequels Category:Monster films Category:Alien films Category:Alien (series) films Category:1986 Category:Alien (series)